Ray Crowe Level: Basic PLUS
I'm a typical Virgo to the extreme, superattentive to details, obsessive/compulsive, intelligent, underconfident in social situations, creative, resourceful, organized, ADD, introverted, very interested in natural/alternative ...
George Romero's 1982 horror omnibus Creepshow brings the Hammer style horror anthology format to America. By the time it was made there was a plethora of popular British horror anthologies like Tales from the Crypt, Vault of Horror, Asylum, and the all-time classic Dead of Night, but this subgenre was strangely rare for American films at the time, and Creepshow opened the door for the format and gave US audiences a taste of the horror anthology. It made a respectable $19,000,000 in box office revenue alone, more than doubling its very hefty $8,000,000 budget, and has since remained a cult favorite and is still one of horror master Romero's best and most colorful films. The five condensed stories in Creepshow represent tales from a fictional 1950s EC-style comic book of the same name, hosted by a creepy character called "The Creep", and indeed the film as a whole is a tribute to scary comics from that era, which would have been when Stephen King and George Romero were at their most impressionable.
The first tale is "Father's Day" and revolves around a family gathering at a long-deceased patriarch's enormous country estate on the dreaded day. It turns out that batty Aunt Bedelia (Viveca Lindfors) murdered her venomous father on the very same day seven years before, just before the old man was to dig into his massive cake. And when the troubled alcoholic Bedelia drinks and swears at her father's tombstone in the present, guess who comes lumbering out from within the grave and strangles her to death with vengeful fury -- dear dead Daddy, now a rotten corpse moaning "I want my cake!" with a deep, raspy throat full of earth. The dessicated zombie then treks his way back to his home where the other family members are waiting, and in the end Papa does indeed get his cherished cake... it just happens to be adorned with the severed head of the old man's niece!
Our next tale "The Lonesome Death of Jordy Verrill" is more humorous and stars horror author Stephen King himself (who also wrote the screenplay and gives an amazing performance) as Jordy Verrill, a middle-of-nowhere hermit -- complete with overalls and unshaven face -- who has a meteor strike earth on his land and envisions himself selling it in town for some much-needed extra cash. He's excited with his discovery at first, but after pouring cold water on the smoldering meteor it breaks apart, dashing Jordy's money-filled dreams. He picks up the cooled remains of the fallen star, trashes it and goes about his way watching television and having a brew when he discovers something even more astonishing: A patch of green moss has formed on his hands where he touched the meteor, and it's spreading rapidly over his entire body and onto everything he touches! Before long, Jordy's house is a virtual jungle of moss, grass and foliage, and the hermit -- now completely consumed by the mossy stuff inside and out and barely able to breathe -- knows he has to make a difficult decision to stop his suffering.
Our third story is "Something to Tide You Over," a fun revenge yarn that has sociopathic creep Richard (the late Leslie Nielsen in a very atypical role) murdering his wife Becky (Dawn of the Dead's Gaylen Ross) and her lover Harry (Ted Danson) by burying them up to their necks in the beach sand and leaving them to be slowly drowned by the steadily rising tide. After completing his dreadful deeds, Richard returns to Harry's seaside condo and lounges around the swank living quarters remorselessly... until he's visited by the water-logged corpses of Becky and Harry, who want to give Harry a taste of his own medicine. This is probably tied with "Father's Day" as my favorite thanks to the inventive concept and engaging performances by Nielsen and Danson.
The fourth and longest segment "The Crate" introduces us to the depressing world of Henry Northrup (Hal Holbrook), a college professor whose only pleasure in life comes from imagining the death of his drunken, controlling, loudmouth wife Wilma (Adrienne Barbeau) at his own hands with by gunshot to the head, strangulation, et cetera. One day Henry's pal, fellow professor Dexter Stanley (Fritz Weaver), discovers a 200-year-old unopened crate in the crawlspace under some stairs in the college. It turns out that living within the crate is an ancient ape-like beast that hasn't eaten in 200 years and is hungry for human flesh, and after the creature's home is disturbed by Stanley and school janitor Mike (Don Keefer), it springs to life, pulls the custodian into the crate and eats him right in front of Stanley's horrified eyes. Stanley runs to Henry's side and half-babbles the gruesome story to his best friend, who believes him and in a flashing lightbulb moment hatches a plan to lure his bitchy wife into the school and into the mouth of the beast, ridding him of his heavy burden. Holbrook is perfect as the pussy-whipped Stanley; wonderful Barbeau gloriously chews the scenery and spits it out as alcoholic bitch Wilma; and Demon Seed's Weaver is equally impressive as the haunted Dexter Stanley who knows he's responsible for the beast ever getting out in the first place.
If you're squeamish about bugs, you may want to steer clear of the fifth segment "They're Creeping Up On You". Interestingly, this story is often completely omitted when the film airs on commercial television for time constraints and stars veteran EG Marshall in a vivid role as the cruel and ruthless Upson Pratt, an obsessive-compulsive company bigwig (with an intense phobia of germs and insects) who lives in a hospital-like penthouse and treats everyone he encounters with the utmost disgust... until one night he begins spotting cockroaches in his sanitary haven, finding them in his food, blender, vents, coming through the faucets and power outlets. He tries calling for help, but soon there's a city-wide blackout and Pratt is left alone in the dark with hundreds of hungry roaches that end up making a home of his corpse.
There's also a cool wrap-around story that loosely connects the five comic book tales and features horror pro Tom Atkins as an abusive father who discovers his son Billy (Stephen King's son Joe) has been reading Creepshow and cruelly seizes the magazine from the boy one Halloween night, crumpling it up and tossing it in the garbage can outside the house. But Billy won't let his old man get away with destroying his beloved Creepshow, and the next morning he begins sticking pins through the neck of a voodoo doll (which the boy's secretly ordered from an ad in the comic) symbolizing his bastard of a dad. Suffice to say the doll works, and Dad will be a pain in the neck for Billy no longer!
Creepshow is a good-humored celebration of the macabre that is fast-paced (even at two hours in length), gory, fun and stylishly directed by Romero. It also has an unforgettable John Harrison piano score that remains one of the best ever in a horror film IMO. It's spawned two sequels to date and set the standard for films like Cat's Eye and Tales From the Darkside: The Movie, and for me is the very best American horror anthology ever made, so I give it a 9 of 10.
I'm a typical Virgo to the extreme, superattentive to details, obsessive/compulsive, intelligent, underconfident in social situations, creative, resourceful, organized, ADD, introverted, very interested in natural/alternative health. I'm a published content writer on Yahoo at http://contributor.yahoo.com/user/1041294/ray_crowe.html, and I also sell rare videos and books as Vintage Vendors at http://www.vendio.com/stores/VintageVendors.
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This article has been viewed 5 time(s). Article Submitted On: April 26, 2011
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